Sell your Sega Genesis games for cash.

Sega’s 16-bit console launched in Japan as the Mega Drive in October 1988. Sega co-founder David Rosen renamed it Genesis for the US release that August 1989 and brought in Michael Katz, a combative ex-Coleco executive, to run Sega of America. Katz went after Nintendo by name with the "Genesis does what Nintendon’t" campaign, something no console maker had done before, and signed star quarterback Joe Montana for an EA football game as a celebrity-endorsement play Sega couldn’t otherwise afford against Nintendo’s marketing budget, which Sega’s own team estimated at ten times its size.

It was a slow build, not an instant win: Sega of America’s own marketing director admitted the Genesis launched with just five titles and didn’t look like a contender even a year in. But the aggressive, rock-soundtracked advertising and EA’s early commitment to the platform paid off: by Christmas 1991, Genesis had outsold the Super NES in North America, a lead Sega held until 1994. Madden NFL, NHL Hockey, and the Mutant League series ran on the Genesis’s faster drawing speed and effectively built the template the modern sports game still follows. The console went on to sell more than 30 million units worldwide.

Genesis games shipped in plastic clamshell cases rather than the cardboard boxes most of its contemporaries used, and that single packaging choice is a big part of why complete-in-box Genesis games have held up better than NES or SNES titles from the same general era: less crushing, less water damage, fewer torn flaps. It’s a real, physical reason the format grades well today, not just a collector’s hunch.